


Free Admission

by botanicalTJ



Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Depression, Introspection, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23968378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/botanicalTJ/pseuds/botanicalTJ
Summary: Life isn't what it used to be. / post-fire, introspective piece
Kudos: 23





	Free Admission

**Author's Note:**

> here’s an introspective piece i wrote during a night much like the one described.
> 
> content warning// heavy themes of depression. no happy ending here, folks.

Pony had never felt so empty before. It was like the whole world had dulled around him. Nothing felt right anymore. It was like he was living in some kind of bubble that separated him from everything and everyone, a dull sheen that coated it all like a layer of sickness. Even Two-Bit’s jokes, Soda’s laughter, Darry’s affectionate head rubs couldn’t scrub away the residue of what his world had become.

Even losing his parents hadn’t hurt this bad. Maybe it was because Dallas and Johnny were just kids. Maybe because they left two empty spaces behind in the group of boys that were family in just about every sense of the word. Maybe because they were two of the very few people that Pony had left, and now they were gone and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. 

Pony ached to feel something, anything, without ever really feeling the ache at all. Like someone had turned a knob in his brain and dulled all the details of his senses. 

His brothers were worried, so fucking worried all the time, and Pony felt so guilty because of it. Every time Darry asked if he was alright, he lied. He did the same with Soda, even though he knew Soda wasn’t falling for it. Maybe Darry wasn’t, either, but Pony figured that they’d be less worried if they didn’t _really_ know what was going on in his head. Truth be told, the inside of Pony’s head was pretty dark stuff sometimes, and he was embarrassed by it. Before, he would have talked to Johnny because he knew Johnny understood better than anyone what it felt like to be trapped inside your own mind. But of course, that wasn’t an option anymore. Pony had nobody. 

And so, every night, he lay awake in bed next to his brother, moving closer when Soda pulled him closer and pretending to be asleep whenever Soda got up to go to the bathroom. He lay there every night, wishing sleep would claim him but instead being stuck on the ride of his own thoughts swirling around in his head. Soda noticed, Darry noticed, _everyone_ noticed the dark circles around his eyes and how he nodded off in front of the television almost every afternoon when he got home from school. but no one said a word because what could any of them do about it if they couldn’t bring Dallas and Johnny back?

And so that’s how the rest of his semester went. up at sunrise; pop an aspirin or three to combat the headache he seemed to constantly have; shuffle off to school only to zone out in every period; get home and doze off on the sofa; pick at his dinner enough to keep Darry off his back; then lay in bed next to Sodapop, pretending like everything was alright when really the night’s darkness was suffocating him from the inside out… just like it had done moments before Dallas and Johnny had met their painful ends. 


End file.
